Or: I am too easily amused by puns.
Have you guys ever seen Kiki's Delivery Service? If you haven't, you might not want to read this post. I'm going to be talking about the plot of the movie and if you don't want to be spoiled, feel free to skip this post. (Although the movie is... like 23 years old. While it might be a bit less well-known, it's still like putting a spoiler warning before the fact that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father.)
*waits for people to leave*
Ready?
Alrighty, so if you haven't seen it, Kiki's Delivery Service is about a thirteen-year-old witch who leaves home for to live on her own (with her cat) for a year as part of her training as a new witch. She's a witch, right, so you expect the movie to end with a fight with a villain/bad guy, right? (See: Almost every Disney movie ever.)
Except... not. It's a movie about a girl who learns to become more confident in herself, who makes friends in a new place, and matures. The movie has a definite peak of drama at the end, but there's no antagonist and even the climax of the movie is very much linked into Kiki's growth as a character.
That's something that's hard to do, especially when you have a supernatural element. It's very easy to have the plot distinctively linked to that element. And that's not bad (I do it myself) but this is a great example of not always needing that.
It doesn't make it a weak plot, either, as long as there is character growth. I think a plot like this is intricately linked to its characters. Kiki grows through the movie. She develops more confidence, begins to trust herself more, opens up to people more, and becomes more responsible. Especially the self-confidence which was a HUGE thing.
I'm not really good at this kind of thing myself (hey, we're always learning, though) so mostly I'm going to point you in the direction of this movie and tell you to watch it because it's a charming movie and absolutely adorable AND it's a good lesson on plots without "bad guys".
(Also I stand by my right to watch things dubbed in English because I don't really like subtitles and I like multitasking and you can't multitask with subtitles. At least I can't. And, dude, the UK dub of The Secret World of Arrietty has Saoirse Ronan. The girl is 18 and she's won an OSCAR. Plus hello, English accents are awesome. I'm not going to discuss the Disney dub because... way too many Disney voices. But... yeah.)
This blog post had very little point besides me recommending a movie. It's hot and I'm brain-dead, this is the best I got :P
Leave me stuff in the comments.
Peace and cookies,
Laina
